Love Me: The Manoir

The Boy I Met in The Laundry Room

The title of this chapter is only slightly misleading as I technically met Derrick the week before walking out of a lecture. All I remembered about him was that he was very attractive. And I mean VERY attractive. And (as my flatmate Clarissa likes to remind me) had very nice coats.

It was just a normal quiet night when one of my flatmates couldn't work the laundry machines, and with a rolling of my eyes I stood up to go and help him.

"There are some kids watching anime in there," Richard – the flatmate – told me.

As we walked in, I realised that it was the guy I had met the week before, and I excitedly went back to my flat after working out the machine to tell them that the fit guy from my course was in the laundry room. As a bunch of bored teenage girls do, my flatmates (and some rugby players) asked to go and see this fine specimen.

When I was younger, I used to like to create little fantasies in my head whenever I made eye contact with strangers. As we sat in the laundry machine while my flatmate Sandy tried to buy a laundry card, I found myself constantly making eye contact with this boy. However, I had learnt to not interpret these kind of gestures any further than my fantasies. Not point in only causing more emotional trauma for myself about people who will never notice me.

Except he did notice me. When I finally returned to my flat, I looked at my phone to see a friend request. It was the guy from the laundry room.

My flat nearly shook from the amount of excited screaming that came from my flatmates. What happened next surprised me even more.

He messaged me.

This beautiful, handsome, god-crafted boy messaged me! Within 10 minutes we had arranged to meet for drinks.

In a brief fleeting moment I thought about Andrew. Was it ethical to go for drinks with this boy when I had almost accidentally restarted a long distance relationship? But my love for fantasy and cliché was stronger than my conscience. I went to the bar.

And I waited. And waited. I waited so long that the student bar had closed and I was sure I had been stood up. Because why would this kind of boy – someone who was far out of my league – actually meet up with me?

As I walked home, I bumped into him and he told a story about having to walk someone home and how he was very sorry. He had a soft voice, and an intense gaze. I invited him to my kitchen where he met my whole flat who seemed to have stayed up just to meet him.

What followed was what I can only call a week of courtship. I saw him two (sometimes three) days a week, and we hung out as friends would. We did work together, he came and helped me analyse poetry, he even came on one of my rugby socials.

I couldn't tell where he wanted to go with this. I made an effort to not try too hard with the way I looked. He saw me with sopping wet hair, bad skin, in baggy jumpers, and with unstraightened hair.

And, finally, as we were sat on my bed after reading some of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poetry, our heads got closer. And we kissed. He was a brilliant kisser, I have to give it to him. He was clearly experienced.

It was at this point where I told Andrew I needed a week to figure out where my head was at. I wanted to press pause on wherever whatever we were doing was going. He was beginning to talk about coming up, and I knew in my heart of hearts that if I had been swayed so quickly by one person I couldn't continue things on with Andrew.

I would tell him when the week was up that I didn't want to continue our relationship, and he took it like a champ. We decided not to speak after this, largely because he needed time to move on. I respected that, even if I missed speaking to him sometimes.

After the initial kiss, I found the times we hung out getting later and later. We flipped from an almost Victorian kind of courtship to one that became increasingly sexual very quickly. He seemed to want to move very quickly, and as someone who had now had a lot of sex I didn't see the problem with this.

***

The day I slept with him was an odd one. I had been at the cinema in the evening with one of his flatmates – my friend called Christine who had introduced us so briefly after a lecture – and she had said something that nearly made me choke on my KFC chicken burger.

"Is anyone in your flat in a relationship?" I asked, making small talk as you do when you're just getting to know someone.

"Well there's Derrick obviously..."

I think my eyes probably bulged so far out of my head they could have touched my fries. She must be mistaken, I thought to myself, but the thought still made me feel sick to my stomach.

Despite the fact that I hated confrontation, I decided that evening that I couldn't let this stew inside me. He was ironically doing his laundry when I came back from the cinema, and I was about as up front as I could have been.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" I asked him, and he answered a resounding no while unloading his laundry.

For me, this was enough. Christine was probably just mistaken or had the wrong information. As I learnt later that evening, he had just come out of a relationship and for me this was enough to explain all the confusion.

He was very passionate in bed. Clearly very experienced, and I was surprised at how long he lasted. I was starting to think that maybe I could start enjoying sex.